My TV Bumper V2.0

This is my second attempt at my final bumper. Not much is different from version one, just the opening few seconds.

Rather than having the normal sized front cover to the comic, with the white borders around the edges, this over-sized version keeps the audience within the scene, rather than following the white spaces, which in turn increases the suspension of disbelieve. This is only a small change bur one which hopefully adds to the piece significantly.

Final bumper V1.0

Again just a short post and link to my final 30sec bumper about myself. It follows all the ideas laid out in the animatic, which can be found, with a description, earlier on my blog. I am very pleased with the outcome, especially as it was my first true use of AfterEffects, and was also completed ahead of schedule so that if anyone out there over the next few weeks does have any suggestions for improvements, I will be able to improve it.

Anyway I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. It can be found on YouTube, or slightly better quality on my website. Cheers J!

TV bumper rethink

After finishing my animatic for the 30secs bumper about myself, I have decided to make a small change. I was quietly pleased with the outcome, and thought that the comic book styling worked well. However, if I were to use photographs from my past as planed, I believe that all the continuity of the styling would be lost, as I would be mixing both real life images with cartoon illustrations. So to hopefully improve the overall quality of the piece, I have made the decision to replace all pictures which included myself, or my wife, and use the Jay character I created, and a new character to represent my wife, instead. The Jay character has become, and will continue to be, a fundamental part in my own personal online branding and persona, therefore the final piece will also be able to become an exercise in self promotion, should the final quality be as high as expected.

My TV bumper animatic

This is my TV bumper animatic. I chose to tell the story of my life so far in a comic book style which highlights the most important events that have happened. I wanted to pack in a lot but have it moving at a quick pace to hold the audience's attention, the music also enhances this effect. To me the bumper really shows what the final product is capable of being, however in the final piece I intend for all the images to be of a much higher standard, created by mixing real footage and photographs in combination with tools like photoshop and illustrator to give them a more comic/pop art styling.

My 3D model final

Below are a selection of screen shots taken of the 3D modeling process, followed by the posting of the movie on YouTube, and the final movie itself. Hope you enjoy, I was proud of it when it was completed, and really enjoyed working with 3D.

Final storyboard for TV bumper

Below are scanned images of the final storyboard which I will base my TV bumper upon, I apologise for the quality, as these were done with pencil which doesn't scan very well. The idea focuses on special moments from my life so far, presented in an animated comic fashion. I just wanted to place these on my blog to document the whole process of my TV bumper from start to finish.

My 3D Lego test movie

Below is the first test movie of my modeled Lego bricks, it is from a distant camera view so the detail is hard to see, and the animation is just to test the bricks in a 3D space. Look for the full video soon.

My 3D model

As anyone who has visited my personal website has seen, I love Lego, especially Star Wars Lego. Now I know it is extremely geeky but I have grown up with it , but have just never grown out of it. Due to this passion I felt it would be the perfect choice of objects for me to model and animate, and would represent a hobby in my life. Below are some examples of my collection along with some basic plans for the 3D scene.

Animatic Concept

Just a quick pointer back to the very first post I did on this strand which had a couple of basic ideas I had for the TV bumper when it was first mentioned. I have decided to base my final bumper on one of those ideas. It will be the, as of yet untitled, concept with the tag line ‘Life is an adventure’. However the idea may change slightly as the animatic is constructed, and the final form takes shape.

Hand tattooing

Above is my first draft idea at the assignment for tattooing my hand with autobiographical facts about myself. I took the brief too literally and created what I believe is a good image, but not to the brief given. Many of these elements still exist in my final image below and are explained in the description under the image.

This is my hand tattooed with autobiographical features about myself.
The first decision I made was that I wanted the picture to be of my left hand. This is due to the fact that it allows me to show my wedding ring in the picture, and my wedding was one of, if not the most important and proudest moments in my life. I also emphasized this point by leaving my wedding ring in colour.

I chose to show my hand in black and white as I love black and white photography, and I wanted to show a contrast to the images tattooed onto the skin.
Each strand of colour is made up of facts from different aspects of my life. Each strand emanates from the finger tips, and flows and mixes with the other strands to join up as one ‘vein’ of life blood (all the things that make you your own person, and show your ‘life’).

The strands are also made up of different colours and fonts to represent what they are showing. The font size is quite small as I wanted the text to look almost like an aura flowing on the hand, and not look like a block of text. By doing it this way it also allowed me to increase the amount of history I was able to write.

The top strand is green as it represents my travels to New Zealand, a famously ‘green’ country. The second strand is all about my wife, hence the romantic, swirlly, red font to represent the passion I feel for her. This strand is also on the finger with the wedding ring as obviously the two are linked. The middle finger is about my family, so the colour is blue to show the family ‘blood line’. The finger nearest the thumb describes my hobbies which center around computers so I chose a blocky style font to look like the old computer text. Finally, the thumb symbolizes the place where I grew up, which I love, so I chose my favorite colour, purple, and my favorite font, Arial.

My Digital Signature- Final Design

The image has an ordered overall layout because as a person I live my life by order and rules, I can not stand chaos. It may also not sand out aethetically, but I do feel that as a person I don't tend to stand out from the crowd, I like to keep myself to myself.
The ‘JON’ part of the image is in a bigger, bolder font style to emphasize the uniqueness of my identity, over that of my family ‘MOORE’ identity. It is written in Arial font to show my warm and friendly nature, also it is slightly rounded as a text, not unlike myself.
‘MOORE’ is Bookman Old Style due to its long history, like my family name. The shadow was also added to show this point. Both are quite simple old fashioned font types, but that also represents my personality.
I decided on a cross shape form to represent the many crossroads I have had in life, also it indicates that there is more than one side to me. It is over to the left of frame purely for aesthetics.
I chose to use black and white as it gave the image a more stylized finish, and denotes how I tend to view the world in black or white, right or wrong. However the center ‘O’ is grey because firstly, it was a logical merger point, and secondly because in all life sometimes there are grey areas.
Although black usually represents bad, whilst white represents good, I decided to switch them around not only to make my first name stand out, but also to show that their is good and bad in everything.
For a full analysis please see all IDAT107 labels.
Some variations on the design show the light and dark the other way around, but again it doesn't make my first name stand out as much.
The second design shows the 'Jon' and 'Moore' side by side, but I do not feel myself and my family are 'side by side' in a lot of issues, so would not work.

My Digital Signature (part 3)

It would be easy to pick a font type for my design based purely on how aesthetically pleasing I find it and therefore the effect it would have on my design. Having researched the font types, there are many more aspects to take into consideration when picking a style like the history and connotations attached to it. There are many font types which would be technically good for the image. Verdana, Century Gothic, and Tahoma are all very similar rounded texts which were created to be versatile in the way in which they are displayed, i.e. not becoming distorted and visible what ever screen size it is displayed on. All would look good within the design but that would be it.
Impact, does exactly what it says in the name, it is a very bold font type that would make the image stand out, but I think it looks very condensed and squashed, which is in contradiction to me being a fairly open easy to read person. Therefore I have decided on the two font types Arial and Bookman Old Style.
‘Jon’ is to be written in Arial; personally I find it a friendly, warm font which is slightly rounded, all of which could be said about me. Also Arial was designed to be in tune with the mood of the last decades of the twentieth century, with a less mechanical appearance. It is the font’s uniqueness in design, along with its pleasant appearance, which make me feel it is the perfect choice to identify me.
‘Moore’ is therefore to be in Bookman Old Style. This font was created in 1858 so has a long history like my family name. It is also classified as a legible and robust text face, this links to the meaning of my surname, derived from working and surviving on harsh landscapes.

My Digital Signature (part 2)

Above are the main ideas for the layout for my digital signature, each with a brief explanation. All the designs are very ordered in appearance, which was a conscious decision from the out set, due to the fact that one of my main, and possibly best and worse, characteristics is that I am a very organised person always thinking through to the next thing, with every possible variable, to the point of being obsessive. I always like to be in control of situations and can not stand chaos. Also all designs emphasize ‘Jon’ more so than ‘Moore’ for the previously mentioned reasons of believing my name ‘Jon’ is my unique identity, whereas ‘Moore’ is just a given family name which has no bearing on my person, like my family doesn’t.
The designs on the right hand side of the page all show these qualities but I feel that they don’t show anything beyond that. The three on the left hand side have deeper meanings. Again all show the previous qualities but the bottom design is drawn to be like a mirrored reflection, showing that your family does have an imprint on your personal traits and makeup. The middle design shows a similar theme with your uniqueness being linked and merged within your family influences. However the top design represents all those ideas, but also has the added dimension of creating a cross like image to represent that I am more than one sided in my personality and that my life has had some crossroads where I have had to make brave decisions to make me a better person, and the person I am today.



The page above is the cross shaped format refined into a final layout and colour design, again with full explanations. First off I tried the design with the colour purple for ‘Jon’ as it would show another aspect of myself, with purple being my favorite colour. Then the ‘Moore’ would be coloured light blue, a colour below purple on the colour spectrum, denoting ‘Moore’ being below ‘Jon’ in my opinion. However throughout refining the design I felt that it would be better to symbolize this opinion by having ‘Jon’ in capitals, and ‘Moore’ in lower case, along with using widely different font sizes. I also returned the design back to being black and white, black for ‘Jon’, white for ‘Moore’, for two reasons. One, I feel it gives the design a more ordered, mature look, and two, it signifies how I often see the world in things being black or white. The final tweaks to the design were to make the connecting ‘o’ in the two words to be grey as this is logical to show the merger between the black and the white, but also signifies that I am only human and sometimes there are grey areas. Finally I’ve decided to add shadow to ‘Moore’ as it adds depth to the family name, and therefore represents the history. I also feel that this would make the design more aesthetically pleasing, which is the reason for placing the design to the left of frame.

My Digital Signature

Having looked at the task I have concluded that it should be broken down into three key elements. Firstly my name itself, what it means, where it comes from etc. Secondly, the choice of font(s) to represent the aspects I want to illustrate. And finally, the positioning and styling of the text within the frame.
As mentioned on a previous post I have already done a mind map of the factors which go into making me, me. However for this task I wished to simplify these influences to be as personal and identity focused as possible, so I created the following image to represent this idea.



After looking at this image I have chosen to focus in on the character traits I have, as I feel these are unique to making me who I am, as opposed to just experiences I have had.
The main points I want to point out with my name are that firstly it is two parts, ‘Jon’ being a name given individually to me, whereas ‘Moore’ is a family name linked to a large number of people. Secondly I feel that due to having a distant relationship with my family, other than my immediate family, the surname aspect of my name doesn’t define me in anyway, it just acts as an identifier. Therefore, thirdly, ‘Jon’ is the part of my name I wish to be mainly connected with.

Digital signatures examples

Just two quick examples of digital signatures I have pulled off http://www.flickr.com/. They both seem very basic but actually say quite a lot about the author of each piece.

The first one shows not only their name but also their religion, which is a massive part of the influences which make you an individual and unique.

The second is a cool one letter approach, which shows exactly that, the person is cool, modern, and maybe a bit mysterious whilst at the same time in your face.

Digital signature

Although I have not technically started this project yet, when I do, a great deal of thought will have to go into personal reflection so that the image I create will truely represent me.
So this is just to point out the recent post I made in the IDAT 101 strand of my blog which shows a mind map I created of myself. Whilst this was not done for this project it is, and will be, a great aid in showing what makes me an individual and reflecting that back in my digital signature.

First draft ideas (IDAT 107)

It may be ‘jumping the gun’ a bit, but now knowing what our final project is going to be, and having had past experience in the same field, my limited creative juices started flowing and I’ve drafted two ideas for my TV bumper. ‘jumping the gun’ a bit, but now knowing what our final project is going to be, and having had past experience in the same field, my limited creative juices started flowing and I’ve drafted two ideas for my TV bumper.
My first idea is a simple fun advert, similar in style to the latest run of the i-phone ad’s. The images which slowly fill the screen over the course of the piece are supposed to represent a collage of life’s highlights, and convey the message at the end of the piece ‘Life’s an adventure’.

The second idea appears to be more serious at first, with music, graphics, and factual content to represent this. However there is a playful twist at the end to show that side of my personality.
These are basic first draft ideas which will change as my skill set develops, so even if one should become the final storyboard idea, it will be expanded with more depth and detail.